News

Comings and goings

The last month has been a busy one. With the turf season drawing to a close thoughts turn to the yearling sales and planning for next year. It is a time of change, with several of the older horses including our stable star Aramis Grey enjoying their well deserved holidays out in the field before returning for a winter campaign.

A couple of the later maturing two year olds had their first run. Both Bella Veneta (The Chestnut Tree Syndicate) and Famous Footsteps (Rachel Flynn) went off to Kempton to make their debut. Both fillies ran super races and had a good experience so lots to look forward to there.

With the office desks overflowing with sales catalogues, Rae has been busy at Tattersalls. Last month the Irish September Yearling Sale (relocated to Newmarket) was Rae's first port of call. He purchased two lovely yearlings, a Golden Horn filly for the Top Hat & Tails Syndicate and a Showcasing filly for Mr Colin Joseph. Both have since been broken and ridden away and are going nicely in their early training. At the October Yearling Sale Rae was active again and purchased a strong looking Oasis Dream filly out of Book 2 on behalf of Paul Smith and himself. We also acquired two others, a Book 2 filly by Australia out of Jane's Memory (who Rae trained) and a Tamayuz filly from Book 3. Rae also bought three fillies for our new syndicate but more about them in our next article !

Exciting new syndicate proposal !

Tattersalls October yearling sales start next week and we are looking for the next stars of the future. We are putting together one of our three horse syndicates for 2021/2022. Previous years have been very successful, unearthing the likes of Cry Havoc (3 x winner rated 88) and the prolific and consistent Aramis Grey, a 5 x winner for The Musketeers. Last years Chestnut Tree Syndicate of two year olds include the promising Mizzen You, who was second on debut.

Our proposal this year is for a ten share syndicate with each shareholder putting in a one off fee up front to cover purchase costs and one year of training fees for three horses. Rae plans to purchase three yearling fillies over the coming weeks. Those of you who have been involved before will know that we plan to have a range of events for the ownership group in the course of the year including yard visits, opportunities to meet your horses and days racing. If you are interested in coming along to the sales we can also arrange that. Interested ? Then please do get in touch !

Feel free to call Rae (07711 301095) or Linda in the office (01638 661508) if you have any questions. Hoping to hear from you very soon so that we can begin the search !

Our stable star does it again !

The Musketeers Aramis Grey followed up her win at Lingfield earlier this month by posting another win at Wolverhampton last night to take her tally to four wins this season. 

We are running out of superlatives to describe this filly. If we could clone her and have a yard full of horses with her attitude then Rae's job would be an easy one. Under top weight of ten stone she started 9/4 favourite for this Fillies' Handicap run over 6f and 20 yards. Under her regular partner Callum Shepherd she raced in her favoured position towards the rear of the field. Turning into the straight she mounted a strong challenge and quickened well to go on and win comfortably by one and three quarter lengths. Jockey Callum Shepherd is building a great relationship with her and knows her very well so thank you to him for the ride.

It was fantastic that the West Midlands branch of The Musketeers were at Wolverhampton to see the race in person ! Congratulations to all of the members and we hope that there are many more great days ahead.  

Thank you Mr. Heasley

We received this review after the Henry Cecil Open Day, it's lovely to get such great feedback from our visitors !

Dear Mr Rae Guest,

My name is Colin Heasley and I am the Irish man who visited your yard today with wife and friend.


I just wanted to thank you for making our day so special and we can honestly say your yard was the most professional with such friendly staff.


Your assistant Dan made us so welcome and showed us round and gave us a very informative talk about you, your horses, training styles and every detail about every horse in your yard.


I just wanted to thank you as the visit to your yard today was our
highlight.

Thank you once again.

The Henry Cecil Open Weekend

Well, The Henry Cecil Open Weekend is over for another year and what a lot of fun we had !

We kicked off on Saturday afternoon with the Newmarket Hack Class and the girls did us proud. In the non thoroughbred class Anna and Hugo came first and MJ and Frank came second. Both of the girls rode well and we are very proud of them. Special thanks to MJ who turned both horses out beautifully and her pristine plaits were commented on by judge Chris Wall. Sunday morning we opened the yard and had a steady stream of visitors all morning long. We are grateful to all who made the effort to visit us and it was especially nice to hear people say how impressed they were by our staff's knowledge and love of their horses and what a friendly yard we are. In the afternoon we headed off to the Severals for the team mounted games competition in which we certainly need more practice in ! However, our riders were up for the challenge and it provided much hilarity !

Another success which we are claiming is in the dog show in which our owner Andy Muddyman had an entry. His stunning rhodesian ridgeback, Newton, won the Most Handsome Dog Class, so well done Andy !

We would like to thank everybody who supported us this weekend both at home and at the competitions, including several of our owners. Thank you to those members of our staff who worked extra hard to make this weekend possible and a special thanks to our assistant trainer, Dan O'Neill who has gone above and beyond the last few days with the preparations, his many duties even included ironing ! 

One of our favourite moments was when the picture on the right was taken, the little boy on the right in the green sweater actually thought Hugo was a real life unicorn !